The frequency of dust lanes in edge-on spiral galaxies identified by Galaxy Zoo in KiDS imaging of GAMA targets

Understand

Dust lanes bisect the plane of a typical edge-on spiral galaxy as a dark optical absorption feature.

• Their appearance is linked to the gravitational stability of spiral disks; the fraction of edge-on galaxies that displays a dust lane is a direct indicator of the typical vertical balance between gravity and turbulence; a balance struck between the energy input from star-formation and the gravitational pull into the plane of the disk.
• Based on morphological classifications by the Galaxy~Zoo project on the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) imaging data in the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) fields, we explore the relation of dust lanes to the galaxy characteristics, most of which were determined using the {\sc magphys} spectral energy distribution fitting tool: stellar mass, total and specific star-formation rates, and several parameters describing the cold dust component.
• We find that the fraction of dust lanes does depend on the stellar mass of the galaxy; they start to appear at $M^* \sim 10^9 M_\odot$.